Diet and Fitness

Cheers :thumbsup: Lots of tips here on form:

http://www.bicycling.com/training/fitness/scrawny-cyclist-arms-no-more-10-steps-to-the-perfect-pushup/

Flute practice tonight :thumbsup:

That is a pretty good cue and guide to press ups, everything I would have said.

No way cyclists are going to get away from their scrawny arms and hollow chests though :grin:

It seems youā€™re right. This guy said his legs were fine but his arms hurt French cyclist Robert Marchand sets new record aged 105 - BBC News.

VB

Great story, some achievement that.

Great storyā€¦Thatā€™s positive mental attitude :thumbsup:

Survived my first 1500 calorie day today (approx). Did 16000 steps according to my phone (just shealth inbuilt pedometer) walking in and out of town and around museum with the kids. Reaquainting myself with physio resistance band exercises and push ups etcā€¦

Soā€¦2-3 months focusing on diet and core/basic all-round strength and not worrying too much about how slow I am on the bikeā€¦

How did you arrive at 1500 calories per day?

Empirically. Aiming for 1500-1800 calories a day, with a cheat meal on the day i did my long ride, meant that I lost ~0.75kg per week. Iā€™m not sure whether thatā€™s too rapid in terms of muscle loss though so prob aim for 1700-1900 this time. Yesterday was a psychological test more than anything else.

In terms of weight goals, as long as Iā€™m below 67kg Iā€™m happy as I want to be below 2.2lb per inch height for cycling. I was down at 63kg, and body fat wise could have gone lower (I think), but I think extra strength will help with both sustaining weight and performance/ injury prevention- so donā€™t expect to get down that low this time.

Yeah I think 1500 is too steep, if youā€™re not careful your body will go into catabolism which would be counterproductive.

If you track calories without going OCD then you can nudge your body with a consistent 100 cal daily deficit and use exercise to prompt your body to start burning fat. I quite like Tabata for that but ymmv.

How tall are you and what kind of body frame do you have - i.e. Are you the classic narrow shouldered long limbed body type of the competitive cyclist?

When you say avoid injury have you had a pattern in the past or are you just worried about losing time off the bike? Joint mobility and static stretches are the best strategy - this was the secret behind Ryan Giggs being about to play at the top level till 40 (lots of ā€˜hotā€™ yoga etc but that headline hides all the mobility work he learned to do).

Would that be the kind of mobility needed to get away quickly when your brother arrives home unexpectedly in the middle of a ā€˜hot yogaā€™ session ?

VB

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I think youā€™re probably right. When I was eating 1500 calories in main meals plus another 3-400 hundred in mid- morning and afternoon snacks I was still losing weight.

No. Iā€™m 5ā€™8" and at my leanest Iā€™m more Cavendish than Froome :wink: Iā€™m capable of being as fast as I want to be but prob would never be competitive :stuck_out_tongue:

I am verging on hypermobile so for me itā€™s the opposite, core and general strength rather than flexibility. My physio pretty much said that stretch wise I could do hip flexor stretch if I had spent >4 hours on the bike but otherwise not to waste my time on flexibility

Compulsory viewing if youā€™ve ever set foot in a gym - this someone you know or itā€™s you :laughing:

Twice up and down the 3 flights of steps outside our office is 400 steps and takes about 3 mins, so Iā€™ll plan to try and get away from the computer and do that once an hour

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So far achieved 10k per day, been a struggle as had a cold since new year.

Bought a Fitbit which records heart rate etc. Only moderate walking so normally have 100-110 bpm. Walk yesterday evening reckoned I averaged 148 and was hitting 175bpm.

Seems back to normal today.

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Good effort :thumbsup:

Good job. Interested in your bpm and what your goals might be?

If itā€™s specifically to fat burn then although steady state cardio has taken a knock recently, it can be effective particularly if you combine a fasted walk first thing in the morning with lower bpm (without breathing very heavily/ panting) - this will hit fat when insulin levels are low and do a good job of metabolising.

If you enjoy a faster march and you still want weight loss then itā€™s actually better to do this will some fuel inside you first so 30 mins after a meal etc - this way the body wonā€™t start stripping your muscles for fuel and leave the fat alone.

I went for a 30 min walk at lunch today, before eating. I briefly had a look to try to work out whether before or after was better but didnā€™t have time to find a convincing answer so just said fuck it and went before because thatā€™s what I fancied :stuck_out_tongue:

Phone app said 3700 steps, averaged 14.14min/mile and it was up a hill and back down again, on the way up the hill my heart rate was raised (to ~130), just checking it with my phone (optical sensor on samsung).

After the first day I tried the push ups I was really quite sore the following two days! Bit pathetic for counter pushups, even if it was 100 of them :stuck_out_tongue: Did it again, concentrating on proper form and it was harder (i didnā€™t make it to 20 on the last two sets), but I wasnā€™t really sore the following days. Will do them again tonight. I did some negatives as well as the counter push ups- will try to do more of them tonight too.

Iā€™m not convinced counter push ups will translate into a horizontal push up - 100 reps of which will stimulate the slow twitch fibres but its the fast twitch you need to recruit to get your horizontal push ups going. A helpful cue is to think about lowering as stretching a rubber band, and then at the bottom try to ā€˜explodeā€™ back up.

Negatives will help but they are notorious for making you sore - and thatā€™s counterproductive when you need some frequency to help get you going - not being able to repeat within 1-3 days is not going to help build up the strength Iā€™m afraid.

I would recommend progression on either dumbells or resistance bands as the best way of building up.

Another plan might work if you can do one press up? Do one rep on the minute for ten minutes - which will give you about a minute to recover. Then you progressively reduce the rest times by 5 seconds each time and soon enough youā€™ll be doing 10 reps. This is a strategy I find that works well when trying to teach people how to do a decent amount of pull ups. Once you can do 10-12, then stop, rest for 1-2 mins and then shoot for another set of 12 etc. Iā€™d imagine for your purposes that if you can do 3 sets of 10-12 press ups that would be about as much as you need?